Insanity’s First Draft

by Bruce Patterson, April 19, 2017

“He who dwells in the past robs the present. He who ignores the past robs the future.” Confucius (551-479 BCE)

It makes sense that when CNN decided to give us a history lesson on “America in the 1950s,” ‘60s, ‘70s and so on, they’d do it from the perspective of Nixon’s Great Silent Majority. Nixon’s GSM being the hallowed members of “America’s Greatest Generation” (the AGGs) and their straight-arrow, spit-shined offspring. The AGGs being the Great Depression’s rag-hanging farm, newspaper and shoeshine boys, sweatshop shrimp, warehouse mop-floppers and hash-house pearl-divers who grew up, wised up and, united into a clenched fist and imbued with a Love of God’s Country, vanquished the fucking Nazis and their allies with one hand tied behind their backs. That other hand being busy whipping on the Japs who—funny thing—didn’t have any allies but had made enemies of nearly everybody living in East Asia and Oceania.

We’re talking about the AGGs who not only helped create the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they gave the civilized world the Nuremburg Principles so that future mass-murderers could no longer shamelessly claim they’d only been dutiful patriots following legal orders. With the UN to enforce a humanitarian form of International Law and Order, the AGGs would help to not just guarantee World Peace but, out of WW2’s killing fields and bombed-out cities, they’d birth a Free World safe from tyranny, war, famine and mass misery.

Then, starting a mere five years after the defeat of The Axis, came the UN “Police Action” in an ancient culture on the other side of the world on a peninsula called Korea. Using the infant UN as a fig leaf (more like a slender reed), and anxious to feed bloody meat to the Dixiecrat/Democrat war hawks busy blaming president “weak-kneed Harry” for America’s recent “Loss of China” to the Chinese, poor old Harry got bamboozled by his Generals and “political strategists” into sticking American boys into a meat grinder of a civil war in Korea that was in no way, shape or form any of America’s business.

Since the very same Congressional warmongers (like freshly caught fish, American wars are bought and sold at auction) furiously demanding that Harry “unleash” General Cash-My-Check’s Liberation Army from their island prison called Formosa uniformly refused, as demanded by the Oath they’d sworn to uphold the Constitution, to vote for a Declaration of War against “north” Korea, “the Communist Aggressors” or whomever, they not only washed their hands of the perpetual-motion bloodbath (4,000,000+ dead) they’d set in motion, they’d handed dictatorial powers to what would one day become a sasquatch-looking creature called the Commander-in Chief who, though he be old, slow and heavy of jowls, out to prove himself the still the undefeated and undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the Free World.

As one result, the notion of UN as a neutral arbiter was strangled in the crib. Another result was the bald-faced repudiation of the Nuremburg Principles. What next? Take the profit out of war? Come on, it takes two to tangle and we’ve got to defend ourselves. So it is that, with the sole exception of Jimmy Carter, every president during my nearly seven-decade-long lifetime has used his “war powers” to make war on the Third World’s poor—or at least what Americans now think of as war: a violent Game Show played on the far side of the world with other people’s money and other people’s lives.

If the generation who had the crimes of Hitler, “Tojo” and Stalin to learn from still gave us of the “Postwar World” the Korean, Indochinese and plenty of other brushfire holocausts, plus the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the nuclear submarine, Inter-continental missiles, multiple warheads, killer robots, killer lasers, a perennial Global Arms Race and, eventually, The Mother of all Bombs, counts as The Greatest American Generation ever, then please give me the most humble generation there ever was. I mean, if the rankest hypocrisy wasted away human bodies the way it shrivels human souls, the loudest of these war hawks wouldn’t’ve lived much past the age of forty. Of all of the people Jesus of Nazareth encountered during his wanderings, it seems only the hypocrites managed to really piss him off. Seems today we’ve forgotten why that’d be.

Now I’ll admit I never did tune in to any of CNN’s acclaimed series “Finding Jesus.” Figures that, in the trailers, CNN’s Jesus would look like a male model offering duty-free, French-made perfume in the glossy, “please affectionately sniff me” pages of Vogue Magazine. Makes sense his image would get drilled into my head by CNN’s broadcast “trailers” leading the way into the newest of their splendid spectacles, seeing how it’s now an industry-wide rule that any “Hour Long Special” or “Special Three Part Series” have segments no longer than forty minutes and shall be advertised for no less than three broadcast hours divided into 30 to 120-second-long sales pitches made in the days, weeks and months before the Series Debut or its “Long Awaited Return.” Although, feasting my eyes on the actor playing the Messiah makes me imagine a bronze-skinned surfer dude sporting aqua-blue baggies with snow white stripes coming ashore on Muscle Beach in Venice, California. I imagine just a five second close-up of this guy’s glorious kisser just might be enough to get people marking their calendars and alerting their friends.

“Balloon bread,” Jesus calls from a skid row street corner, Him holding up a plastic bag shaped like a giant square Oscar Meyer All Beef

Tube Steak. “Get your fresh-baked white bread right here.”

If you haven’t yet noticed how we the nationwide studio audience has internalized Orwellian Double-Think, watch Fox/CNN/MSNBC with the sound muted. Look carefully at what you’re being shown and try’n count all of the “takes” they can squeeze into a seemingly eternal 60 seconds. It’s like, before the first shell hits the ground, six bullets are out the barrel. Pay close attention and pretty quick you won’t be able to tell what’s news and what’s commercials, product placement, updates, reruns, teases or the anniversaries of infamous Cold Cases you’ve never heard of. 24/7 Talking heads sitting like school children mutely awaiting the grand entrances of Official Spokesmen, 4-Star Sheriffs, Esteemed Experts and talking heads walking and talking at you, or people talking to each other with you eavesdropping, or people planning out inscrutable wars and calculating by committee the potential costs in terms of the expenditure of the Great Leader’s Domestic Political Capital, or ticket-scalpers offering you affordable luxury vacations any damned place you please, wise guys offering easy money, easy credit, bargain basement insurance, 4-Hr. hardons, multiple orgasms, new kneecaps, new brains, expert advice, miracle cures and household articles we can no longer do without (unless we’re willing to disappoint the children).

Here’s an idea: how about we get together and spend trillions of dollars to invent, mass produce, distribute, sell and service automobiles that not just preen in the mirror and flex their muscles but drive themselves without you having to keep an eye out or so much as move a finger? How about futuristic Auto-Mobiles that may as well be running on railroad tracks? Imagine how wonderful that’ll be. Haven’t you always wanted to sit shotgun in your car playing choo-choo train? Imagine what they’ll say in the office when they hear your train whistling downstairs and then see you strolling out the elevator sporting your brand new train engineer’s cap? Good God—everybody’s wearing your engineer’s cap!

By the way, a real train can haul a ton of freight 450 miles on a gallon of diesel. How much do you weigh?

Today’s one big state media conglomeration is the synthetized voice of post-modern Betty Crocker, Barbara Ann, Aunt Jemima and Wally and Beaver Cleaver. Like angels perched on clouds, today’s media personalities sing the praises of olden times back when God-fearing American Soldiers marching off to war and flag-saluting Loyal Citizens were so pure of heart that never in their wildest of dreams did they imagine that the name “Beaver Cleaver” was an alias for Jack the Ripper.

So maybe the Trump junta is a culmination of my people’s long day’s journey into the 1st draft of insanity. Why just yesterday this twisted little sawed-off Alabama-twangin Attorney General of Trump’s, while down there in the Texas Borderlands showing off his shiny new badge and silver six gun, publicly announced—there was Heehaw pride in his voice and wet twinkles of gratitude in his beady little crawdaddy eyes—the start of “The Era of Trump” and “the Return to Law and Order.” And, I swear, the old Beauregard he proclaims this horseshit to the world without a hint of irony. You could almost hear the little devil on his left shoulder whispering in his ear: “Aw, shucks. What a great day for a lynching.”

Now that Trump, his surrogates and palace guards have been linked with Russian mob money (Czar Putin is not just the Father of New Russia, he’s the Master of Siberia, Sovereign Lord of the Arctic Ocean, Protector of the Slavs and Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, he’s also the Boss of Bosses), the key question for freedom-loving Americans is this: “What did Trump know and when did he know it? (In all but official terms, the answers are already apparent and, my friends, the details are not pretty).

Did Trump declare his Russian income and pay his taxes accordingly? Why is he too scared to release his tax returns? He says he’s got nothing to hide and I’m supposed to believe him? HIM? I’m sorry, but I don’t listen to proven pathological liars—I’m not working for the Network. But, Ok, how about this as a compromise: Trust but Verify? Since when did that mundane bit of common American horse sense become obsolete in this would-be Republic? Was it yesterday or the day before? What Court Ruling declared that? What Political Party stands for Public Servants with closed books? Besides, the Feds nailed old Al Capone for cheating on his taxes, so why not nail this orange balloon-looking clown since, by any reasonable measure, he’s far more powerful, wicked, destructive and dangerous than the Capone mob was. Hell, unlike the Trumpites, the Capone mob stayed in business by giving the people what they wanted.

Now I’m trying to remain confident this illegal Trump Regime’s days are numbered. By ruling through malicious Executive Orders issued as Royal Edicts—his “signing ceremonies” are so Masterpiece Theater pompous and vainglorious it’s embarrassing—Master Trump is radically overplaying his hand. He can’t deliver on anything without his Republican Quislings unanimously lining up behind him, and they’re starting to see that this sick, sick puppy can’t deliver shit except maybe a war or three. Not only that, Trump and his posse are brazenly stealing taxpayer money and our Godfather’s too damned lazy to do his homework or even to put in a real work day (Next to himself, Mussolini is Trump’s #1 idol).

So I suspect that here pretty quick the least cowardly of his Republican Quislings will realize it’s time to cut bait and motor on back into port. Feels like a storm is building and it’s no time to be trolling for fish that are either scared away or soon will be. Tomorrow’s a new day and prudence is always the better part of valor. Just because their Trump enterprise was a failure, that doesn’t mean they can’t keep pocketing money.

Then there’s the minor matter of Trump’s inability to keep from making our country enemies. Judging by the number and variety of enemies he’s making for us, if he’s not getting paid (or blackmailed) by Putin then he should as hell should be. Trump has always used outrageous lies and provocations as smoke and mirrors to hide his crimes, but now he’s acting like the using the American Armed Forces to threaten war anywhere on the globe he chooses is his sovereign right: the pork in his barrel. But who elected him Military Dictator and Scourge of the World? Wasn’t me. Wasn’t you.

Encouraging words: Less than 1 in 7 voters in NYC voted for Trump. No Native Son in American history has ever done anywhere near so badly. With this guy, familiarity breeds contempt.